Five Leaves events are suspended from Wednesday 18th March until further notice due to the coronavirus / Covid-19 outbreak. Join our mailing list for updates.

Afropean. Here was a space where blackness was taking part in shaping European identity … A continent of Algerian flea markets, Surinamese shamanism, German Reggae and Moorish castles. Yes, all this was part of Europe too, and these were people and places it needed to understand and embrace if it wanted fully functional societies. And Black Europeans, too, need to demand the right to document and disseminate our stories … With my brown skin and my British passport – still a ticket into mainland Europe at the time of writing – I set out in search of the Afropeans, on a cold October morning.

Afropean – out in paperback this week – is a documentary of areas where Europeans of African descent juggle their multiple allegiances and forge new identities. Here is an alternative map of the continent, taking the reader to  Cova Da Moura, the Cape Verdean shantytown on the outskirts of Lisbon with its own underground economy, and Rinkeby, the area of Stockholm that is eighty per cent Muslim. Johny Pitts visits the former Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, where African students are still making the most of Cold War ties with the USSR, and Clichy Sous Bois in Paris, which gave birth to the 2005 riots, all the while presenting Afropeans as lead actors in their own story.

Admission: £4.00 (£2.00 students) including refreshments. Booking essential on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Five Leaves events are suspended from Wednesday 18th March until further notice due to the coronavirus / Covid-19 outbreak. Join our mailing list for updates.

Sophie Labelle is a Canadian author, cartoonist, and public speaker. She is transgender and known for her webcomic Assigned Male detailing her experiences as a trans woman. She is active in the transgender rights movement and speaks on the subjects of trans history and transfeminism.

Tonight will be a mixture of standup comedy and, well, if we said that she wrote the comic Dating Tips for Trans and Queer Weirdos… you might get the right idea.

This will be a ticketed event with tickets being £8 (£4 for those without a wage), including refreshments.  Contact us on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Five Leaves events are suspended from Wednesday 18th March until further notice due to the coronavirus / Covid-19 outbreak. Join our mailing list for updates.

As the speaker has a long train journey… we will start at 6.00 prompt, with refreshments at the end!

Polari is a language that was used chiefly by gay men at a time when being gay could result in criminal prosecution, offering a means of camouflage and identification. Its roots are varied – from Cant to dancers’ slang – and in the mid-1960s it was thrust into the limelight by the characters Julian and Sandy on the radio show Round the Horne (‘Oh Mr Horne, how bona to vada your dolly old eke!’).

Paul Baker traces Polari’s origins and describes its linguistic nuts and bolts, explores the environments in which it was spoken, and explains the reasons for its decline and unlikely re-emergence.

With a cast of drag queens and sailors, Dilly boys and macho clones, his Fabulosa! is an essential document of recent history and a fascinating account of this ingenious language.

Admission: £4.00 (£2.00 students). Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Five Leaves events are suspended from Wednesday 18th March until further notice due to the coronavirus / Covid-19 outbreak. Join our mailing list for updates.

Join us for half day exploring women artists of the early twentieth century.  We  welcome several specialists talking about many of the women artists of this period.  Many of these artists, well known in their day, are only just being discussed again and their work highlighted.  Certainly books on women artists have been scarce for the last 20 years.  That too is changing at last.

Harriet Olsen, publisher at Eiderdown Books. Eiderdown Books is  a new publisher releasing books about female artists written by leading female writers, art historians and cultural commentators.  So far she has published books on  Laura Knight, Sylvia Pankhurst, Frances Hodgkins, Marlow Moss and Lee Miller., Harriet will be talking about why she set up the press and their approach to the artists that they publish.

Katy Norris on Sylvia Pankhurst, artist and activist.  Through her striking portraits of women at work in the factories, as well as her designs for badges, banners, murals and even tea -sets, her artistic endeavours furthered the argument for universal equal rights. Katy Norris researches Edwardian women artists, in partnership with Tate and Bristol University.  She was previously Curator at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester.

Louise Dunning, Curator of Fine and Decorative Arts, Nottingham Castle.

Louise Dunning job-shares the post of Curator of Fine and Decorative Art at Nottingham City Museums.  She is jointly responsible for over 800 oil paintings, over 4,000 works on paper and around 5,000 decorative art objects.

Nottingham City Museums has a small collection of oil paintings, drawings, watercolours and aquatints by Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970).  Her paintings will be rehung at Nottingham Castle when it reopens in Spring 2021.  Louise will be examining some of Dame Laura Knight’s work in the Collection and looking at the life and significance of this artist who lived in Nottingham during her formative years.

Venue:  Nottingham Mechanics Institute

Please email events@bookshop.co.uk to book your place.  £10/£8 students

We are asking for pre-payment for this event as we know it will be full!

Small cafe and bar on site.

Five Leaves events are suspended from Wednesday 18th March until further notice due to the coronavirus / Covid-19 outbreak. Join our mailing list for updates.

Adam Mars-Jones, we think, last did an event in Nottingham during the local Unsilenced Voices campaign against the homophobic Section 28. Then, he was the author of the collection of short stories Lantern Lecture and had written The Darker Proof with Edmund White. The latter collection reflected the Aids crisis.

A lot of time has passed since then and Mars-Jones has gone on to be a leading reviewer and film critic. His Kid Gloves details his difficult relationship with his father over Adam being gay, as his father slides into dementia.

The first half of this event will cover Adam Mars-Jones career, the second half focusing on his new novel, Box Hill, about a relationship between a gay biker and a younger man – Box Hill being where they met. Box Hill is elegantly published by Fitzcarraldo, Mars-Jones having won their 2019 Novel Prize. A novel of desire and domination, which starts in 1975.

Admission:  £4.00 (£2.00 students) including refreshments.

Please book via events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Five Leaves events are suspended from Wednesday 18th March until further notice due to the coronavirus / Covid-19 outbreak. Join our mailing list for updates.

Will Harris is a writer of mixed Anglo-Indonesian heritage from London.  He is an Assistant Editor at The Rialto. Published in the Bloodaxe anthology Ten: Poets of the New Generation, he was featured in ES Magazine as part of the “new guard” of London poets. ‘SAY’ was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2018, and he won a Poetry Fellowship from the Arts Foundation. His debut pamphlet of poems, All this is implied (HappenStance), was joint winner of the London Review Bookshop Pamphlet of the Year and shortlisted for the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award by the National Library of Scotland.

 Mixed-Race Superman, an essay, was published by Peninsula Press in 2018 and in an expanded edition by Melville House in the US in 2019. His first full poetry collection, RENDANG, is from Granta in the UK  and from Wesleyan University Press in the US later in the year. Will was a stand-out performer at the Nottingham Playhouse poetry day last year.

Author photo: Adrian Pope for the Forward Prizes for Poetry

Admission: £4.00 (£2.00 students) including refreshments. Booking essential via events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Five Leaves Book Group is open, so come as often as you like – once, sometimes, every time. There’s a short introduction to the book, followed by a discussion. You can source the book wherever you like, but in the lead up to the meeting we offer 15% discount on the title in question. All we ask is that you read the book in advance and be prepared to discuss it.

Our book groups are always free and refreshments are provided. Do let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Please join Culture Matters Press for the launch of their anthology of contemporary feminist poetry to celebrate Mayday (a little late, but who’s counting?). Edited by Jane Burn & Fran Lock, Witches, Warriors, Workers is a collection of some of the finest women writers of today.is a collection of some of the finest women writers of today.

Fran Lock will be joined by contributors including Char March and others to be announced.

Admission: £4.00 (£2.00 concessions) including refreshments

Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

With austerity’s disproportionately heavy impact on women now apparent,  this talk considers activism against it from a feminist perspective.

Emma Craddock goes inside activist culture to explore the cultural and emotional dimensions of political participation. She questions what motivates and sustains protest, considering the enabling aspects of solidarity and empathy, as well as  constraining factors of negative emotions and gendered barriers associated with activism, examining the role of gender and emotion within protest.

Emma gets to the heart of what it means to be an anti-austerity activist and brings an important addition to social justice debate. She will be in discussion with Nick Stevenson, who is active in the Univ. and College Union (UCU).

Emma is a former worker at Five Leaves Bookshop. Her research for her book was done in Nottingham including the period when she was campaigning against austerity.  She now teaches at Birmingham City University.

Free, refreshments included. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

A Nottingham Poetry Exchange event as part of Feminist Book Fortnight

Elizabeth-Jane Burnett is a UK writer and academic. Her debut poetry collection Swims (Penned in the Margins) was a Sunday Times Best Poetry Book of the Year. Her monograph A Social Biography of Contemporary Innovative Poetry Communities: The Gift, the Wager and Poethics (Palgrave) explores the ways that recent experimental poetry scenes operate along a gift economy.

She is a regular contributor to BBC3’s Free Thinking and her recently published nature writing book The Grassling, A Geological Memoir won Penguin Random House’s WriteNow competition. Much of her creative practice is informed by its landscape.  She is a keen wild swimmer and walker and is also interested in urban spaces.

Cat Woodward is a socialist feminist lyric poet and academic. Her first collection, Sphinx, was published  in 2017 by Salò Press. Her second collection Blood. Flower. Joy! from Knives, Forks and Spoons Press was published last year. In 2018 she won the Ivan Juritz Prize for a collection of short lyrics.  Cat is a lecturer in Creative Writing at The University of Cumbria.

Charlotte Newman won the inaugural Sabotage Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet and was featured in The Salt Book of Younger Poets. She worked as a journalist for a family law firm, writing for national newspapers while also contributing reviews to The Observer, The New Statesman and Poetry Review. Charlotte  was shortlisted for The Scotsman’s Allen Wright Award for theatre criticism.

Admission: £4.00 (£2.00 students) including refreshments.  Please book your place via events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Sue Dymoke, Pippa Hennessy and Chris Jones read and talk about their science-related poetry along with works by other poets, including Sinead Morrissey, Rebecca Elson and Philip Gross.

Sue Dymoke did not enjoy science at school but became curious about it through poetry. She is interested in how writing poetry can help people to explore scientific questions. Sue is an Associate Professor in Education at Nottingham Trent University. Recent work includes What They Left Behind (Shoestring Press) and DNA Time, a collaborative poem written with structural biologist Pietro Roversi, which explores the complexities of DNA structures.

Pippa Hennessy is a publisher at Five Leaves and a bid writer at Harmless. She has published poetry, short fiction, essays, and comic stories in various magazines and anthologies. Her latest project is to try to understand quantum theory through poetry (or maybe the other way round). She is particularly interested in the intersection between science and poetry in all their forms and is studying for an MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham University.

Chris Jones lives in Sheffield. He has worked on various projects over the last fifteen years alongside physicists, biologists, medical researchers, artists and other writers, contributing to publications and exhibitions on a range of scientific fields including Darwinism, cancer research and colour theory. His last collection of poems was Skin published by Longbarrow Press.

Admission: £4.00 (£2.00 students) including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk.

Part of Nottingham Poetry Festival

“Property is theft”, declaimed Proudhon.  “Property is liberty”, he added, in the bit that no-one remembers.   Property matters and property is full of paradox.  As ownership becomes more intensely unequal, in the face of limited and depleting resources, we face some very difficult and very urgent questions.  Not least, how might we share it better?

Chris Pierson has been teaching politics at the University of Nottingham since the last millennium.  He has spent twenty years reading about property, everything from Pythagoras to Piketty, so you don’t have to!  Skip to the conclusions.  In Volume Three of his Just Property or just listen to this lecture.

This event is free. Refreshments provided. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

“One of the most powerful voices of the Fringe this year” – EdFringe Review 2019

“Genevieve Carver is a stunning poet – her writing strikes sharply and with intention.  A Beautiful Way to Be Crazy summons an electrically charged landscape that charts how women experience the male-dominated music industry with the lyrical integrity you’d expect from Carver.  These poems jump off the page….a difficult book to put down.  I can’t remember the last time reading a poetry collection was this much fun: the writing is damn clever, fiercely honest and speaks to the heart of its reader.” Ciaran Hodgers

At the time of publication, 70% of music acts in the UK are all-male. Based on interviews with female and non-binary practitioners across the music industry, A Beautiful Way to be Crazy is a tale of growing up, finding a voice, and listening to Joni Mitchell records. It was originally a live show by Genevieve and her band of multi-instrumentalist musicians The Unsung.

Expect to meet the spirits of Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone and Delia Derbyshire as Genevieve navigates her way through school bullies, the pressures of mainstream media, anxiety and pregnancy scares, but comes out smiling.

“Carver exudes a warm humility that perfectly complements the fragile and overwhelmingly human spirit at the heart of her story telling”–The Reviews Hub

Genevieve Carver is a Sheffield-based poet searching for the humanity amidst the chaos. Her work has been appeared in publications including Iota, Envoi, and The North, and her first collection will be published by Verve Poetry Press, in February 2020.

Genevieve read some of her poems here last year as part of the launch for Waymaking.  We are delighted that she is back to celebrate the publication of her first volume of poetry.  Do come and join us for a discussion of women in the music industry and hear the poems inspired by her interviews and her stage show with The Unsung.  Genevieve will be chatting to Marie Thompson as well as reading from her collection of poems.  Marie is an ex member of the bookshop staff and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Lincoln’s School of Film and media.

Marie  is the author of Beyond Unwanted Sound: Noise, Affect and Aesthetic Moralism (Bloomsbury, 2017) and co-editor of Sound, Music, Affect: Theorizing Sonic Experience (Bloomsbury, 2013). Marie co-leads, with Annie Goh, Sonic Cyberfeminisms – an ongoing project interrogating the relationships between gender, sound and technology.

“In the autumn of 1929, a child was kidnapped from a Lincolnshire beach. Five days went by before she was found in a nearby village. The child remembered nothing of these events and nobody ever spoke of them at home. It was another fifty years before she even learned of the kidnap.

The child became an artist and had a daughter, art writer Laura Cumming. Cumming grew up enthralled by her mother’s strange tales of life in a seaside hamlet of the 1930s. So many puzzles remained to be solved. Cumming began with a few criss-crossing lives in this fraction of English coast – the postman, the grocer, the elusive baker – but her search spread right out across the globe as she discovered just how many lives were affected by what happened that day on the beach – including her own.”

On Chapel Sands is in hardback but is published in paperback at the start of April

Five Leaves Book Group is open, so come as often as you like – once, sometimes, every time. There’s a short introduction to the book, followed by a discussion. You can source the book wherever you like, but in the lead up to the meeting we offer 15% discount on the title in question. All we ask is that you read the book in advance and be prepared to discuss it.

Our book groups are always free and refreshments are provided. Do let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Get Over Yourself is a new pamphlet of poetry by Nottingham poet Leanne Moden, exploring the issues of belonging and exclusion. Using humour, spoken word poetry and storytelling, Get Over Yourself examines teenage rebellion, grief, sex, self-esteem and self-discovery, taking readers from the political to the intensely personal, and back again. 

The poems in this collection question received wisdom, playfully unravelling the awkward and the bizarre aspects of modern life. Leanne’s poetry is an exploration of human failures and resilience, the things that make us angry, and the things that make us laugh.  It is also about learning to think for yourself and discovering your own opinions through the painful and beautiful process of growing up.

Leanne Moden is a performance poet. In the past, she has performed at WOMAD Festival,  Sofar Sounds, and Bestival on the Isle of Wight.  Leanne has also been national finalist at the BBC Edinburgh Fringe Slam and the Hammer and Tongue Poetry Slam. Last year she performed her first solo theatreshow, Skip, Skip, Skip, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Leanne is part of the team at Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature. 

Leanne will be joined by another act to be announced

Get Over Yourself is published by Burning Eye Books, an independent UK publisher specialising in promoting spoken word artists. 

Free, refreshments included. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Leafe Press is an experimental and internationalist poetry publisher based in Nottingham, run by Alan Baker.

Full line up to be announced

Admission: £4.00 (£2.00 students). Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Price: £180 for the full course (Concessions: 2 x £100 fee for single-parent writers, or writers in receipt of a means tested benefit, personal independence payments, or disability living allowance).

Attendees must pay for full course in advance – individual course units not available separately. Numbers on the course are limited to twelve people.

Dates: Six workshops are held over a 6 month period, on the first Wednesday of the month, to enable you to complete writing assignments:

Tickets can be purchased directly from Five Leaves Bookshop only. Bookings close on 19th May. 

Tennis is not the first sport that comes to mind when you think of socialism and sport, but between the wars there were masses of workers’ tennis clubs, set up in opposition to what was seen as a middle-class sport, with an annual competition sponsored by the TUC. These faded, postwar, but other issues arose within the sport, often to do with gender, sexuality and race. There were campaigns for equality in prize money and tennis players from Arthur Ashe onward literally changed the face of the game. In recent times many prominent women tennis players were out lesbians at a time it was difficult to be out, particularly in sport.

David Berry is a writer and a journalist, and has played tennis since the age of eleven

Entrance: £4 (£2 students), includes refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk